[page 25]

Cheryl Nafziger-Leis(1)

The Influence of Zen Buddhism
On Medieval Noh Drama

For six hundred years the Noh has been a secular Zen mass, in which some of humanity‘s deepest aesthetic responses are explored. (2)

The art of Noh drama evolved out of a rich tradition of performing arts in thirteenth and fourteenth century Japan. A significant turning point in the development of Noh occurred, however, when Noh performers came under the patronage of the shôgunal court, which was also a patron of Zen. The Zen-mi, or taste for Zen, of the court audience came to be reflected by the performance artists. Their art gradually incorporated many aspects of Zen aesthetics and developed into the subtle and graceful dance and music drama we know today as Noh. Thus, key to understanding Noh drama is an understanding of the religious tradition in whose context the art form evolved.

While one school of thought supports the claim that Zen Buddhist influences are apparent in Noh, another school of thought disagrees. Paul Arnold, as one example of this latter school, insists that Noh has no connection to the Buddhist tradition whatsoever. Rather, states Arnold, Noh drama originated from a combination of pagan and Shintô sources: “It is a well known error in the West to consider the Noh as Zen art. The Noh is not even a Buddhist art; it is a form of theatre, which was formed from a profane art of performance and, it seems, developed first in or around Shintô temples.” (3) While I agree with Arnold that Noh did evolve out of both the performance tradition of Japan and the Shintô religion, I disagree with him regarding Noh’s ties to Zen; as I will argue in this paper, a significant turning point in Noh’s development occurred because of the influence of Zen.

Involved in this present investigation will be an outline of Buddhism and, in particular, the sect of Zen and the influence of Zen aesthetics on the medieval culture of Japan. This will serve as background for an understanding of the evolution of Noh drama and the influence Zen had on it. Discussion will be limited to early Noh, for its later forms strayed from many Zen principles.

Zen Buddhism: The Religion

Buddhism was first introduced into Japan in 552CE from Korea. According to the [page 26] Nihongi, Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times, written in 720 CE, the Japanese first learned of Buddhism through a gift to the Emperor from King Syong-Myong of Pèkché, a small Korean kingdom. Along with a plea for much needed troops to fight his enemies in Korea, the king sent a copper and gold image of Buddha, several religious flags and umbrellas and volumes of “Sutras,” or sacred writings. In a letter, the king commended Buddhism, saying,

This doctrine is amongst all doctrines the most excellent. But it is hard to explain, and hard to comprehend. Even the Duke of Chow and Confucius had not attained to a knowledge of it. This doctrine can create religious merit and retribution without measure and without bounds, and so lead on to a full appreciation of the highest wisdom ... Every prayer is fulfilled and naught is wanting. (4)

According to the Nihongi, the Emperor, in response, “leaped for joy,” saying: “Never from former days until now have we had the opportunity of listening to so wonderful a doctrine. We are unable, however, to decide of ourselves.” (5) While some of the Emperor’s ministers recommended it would be good to adopt Buddhism, others emphasized the possibility of offending the deities of Japan: “If just at this time we were to worship in their stead foreign Deities, it may be feared that we should incur the wrath of our National Gods.” (6) The Emperor compromised and gave the Buddha image to those who had encouraged Buddha worship; they then carried out private worship. However, not long thereafter many people died in an epidemic. Those who had been against this new worship claimed the plague was connected to Buddhism. The Emperor took their side; the image of Buddha was thrown into a canal and the temple where it had been housed was burned.

As the first foreign religion to enter Japan, Buddhism provoked a conflict with the existing beliefs of the nation. Japan’s traditions were much less organized than Buddhism and, until the encounter with Buddhism, did not even have a name. The presence of Buddhism caused the Japanese to “become more self-conscious of their own indigenous religious life...Thus, presumably for the first time, a name was given to the old traditions in order to differentiate them from the new. They were called ‘Shinto,’ which means ‘the way of the spirits.’” (7) The immediate concerns for those of the Shintô tradition were not the new doctrines of this foreign religion. Rather, the matter of greatest importance was whether the nobility should worship the statue of Buddha.

Buddhism and Shintô eventually found ways of co-existing, but in 587 CE Shintô was [page 27] overshadowed as Buddhism was elevated from the status of a private cult to a state religion. (8) As such, Buddhism was considered partly responsible for the nation’s welfare. The success of Buddhism as a religious influence on the state may, on the one hand, have been “partly due to the fact that the state was in the initial stages of formation, and partly due to the profundity of Buddhist teaching and to the great appeal of its art, ritual and magic.” (9) On the other hand, however, the reason for Buddhism’s fortune in Japan, may have been much more comprehensive:  “Buddhism gained ascendancy in medieval Japan largely because it successfully put forward a coherent explanation of the world and of human experience; it was the single most satisfying and comprehensive explanation available to the Japanese people at that time.” (10) According to this view, Buddhism provided a meaning structure, a Weltanschauung for medieval Japan. (11)

The Buddhist school of Zen did not reach Japan until several centuries later. According to Nancy Wilson Ross, Zen, which originated in India in the sixth century BCE, did not arrive in Japan until the twelfth century CE. Whereas Buddhism had come as a gift from Korea, the Zen sect made it to Japan via China, where it had been developing since the first century CE. (12) Many Japanese, most of them monks, had gone to China during the T’ang dynasty to study. They brought back Zen upon their return.

The Indian teachings which the Japanese carried with them to Japan from China had been significantly altered by the Chinese. (13) The Chinese with their Taoistic outlook developed Zen’s [page 28] (or “Ch’an,” in Chinese) peculiar form of “dynamic meditation,…that condition of full awareness, neither passive nor aggressive.” (14) Ch’an, as passed-on to the Japanese, “had no sacred images because it had no gods to worship, and it deemphasized the scriptures, since its central dogma was that dogma is useless.” (15) The Japanese, in turn, applied the subtle dynamic laws of Zen to their own indigenous ways. Zen, according to Nancy Wilson Ross, is thus the Sino-Japanese expression of ancient Buddhist teachings from India.

Other Buddhist sects had become well established in Japan by the time of Zen’s arrival. Shingon and Tendai Buddhism, for instance, had been embraced by the military classes of Japan. Although Zen originally had a more difficult time than other Buddhist sects gaining wide acceptance among the Japanese, now the “tenets of Zen... lie at the root of the most unique elements of Japanese life. Zen’s influence, implicit or explicit, can be traced through almost every aspect of Japan’s culture.” (16)

In contrast to other Buddhist sects, Zen Buddhism rejects the notion that the world and this life are nothing but illusion. Instead, basic to Zen is the idea of a cosmic Buddha, “fully and çerfectly embodied in the material world and the experience it offers.” (17) Rather than viewing the material world as insignificant, Zen masters perceive an underlying unity and purpose--a revelation of the Buddha--in what appears a mere meaningless jumble. Zen masters emphasize that “Zen is our daily experience...not something put on from the outside,” and “drudgery is divine.” (18)

A key aspect of Zen discipline consists in attaining enlightenment (“satori” in Japanese). Just as “drudgery is divine,” satori finds a meaning hidden in our daily concrete particular experiences; the meaning as revealed is not something added from the outside. Rather, the meaning “is in being itself, in becoming itself, in living itself.” (19) Enlightenment is central not only to Zen but to all schools of Buddhism “because the Buddha’s teachings all start from his enlightenment experience, about 2,500 years ago in the northern part of India.” (20)

Instead of intellectualizing one’s way to enlightenment, Zen stresses sudden enlightenment, which nevertheless follows a period of hard training. Despite the training, one can neither predict when enlightenment will occur, nor can one make it occur. Likewise, one is not to reflect on the word or the experience; Zen emphasizes the significance of immediate understanding:

[page 29] No reflecting whatever. When you want to see, see immediately. As soon as you tarry (that is, as soon as an intellectual interpretation or meditation takes place), the whole thing goes awry... The door of enlightenment-experience opens by itself as one finally faces the deadlock of intellectualization. (21)

Prior to reaching enlightenment, however, there are six stages, or courses, through which one must pass. These six courses, referred to as the rokudoh, constitute the basic portrait of the universe accepted as true by all schools of Buddhism. The basic understanding includes the belief that “karmic reward or retribution” for past acts influences the direction in which every kind of being moves along the “ladder of the universe.” (22)

The six stages, in descending order, include:

1.         gods
2.         humans
3.         asuras (warring ones)
4.         animals
5.         hungry ghosts
6.         creatures of hell

It is important to note that each being of the universe, when at any of the six stages, is always on an ongoing journey and only temporarily located at its present position. This journey occurs against the background of “nearly infinite cosmic time.” (23)

Inherent in the system is the fact that “[d]eath will result in rebirth, and rebirth always poses the possibility of either progress or slippage to another location in the taxonomy.” (24) The idea that each individual is responsible for his or her own future caused great concern regarding the possibility of ever really being able to escape the dire effects of one’s actions and move upwards. There was a need for relief from the despair of the conception of karma and “transmigration as exact, inexorable, and unmitigated." (25) In light of this need, explains LaFleur, theories of salvation were developed. These theories contributed to the possibility of optimism and hope. One cannot overemphasize the importance of these theories of salvation “for the literary arts of the entire medieval period,” including among them, the art of Noh drama. (26) [page 30]

Aesthetics of Zen

Critics of Zen have claimed that the very fact that Zen thinkers and artists insist on religious enlightenment being found in everyday life is a grave weakness of Zen. “Moreover, from orthodox points of view,” insist critics, “Zen had made the fundamental mistake of substituting art for religion.” (27)

Whether it was a mistake or not, Zen did have a significant influence on the medieval arts of the Japanese people. This does not deny, however, that other schools of Buddhism also influenced the arts to a certain degree. Earhart cites, for example, Shingon Buddhism’s contribution to the graphic arts. Nevertheless, Zen’s impact was greater; “Zen pervaded the whole culture.” (28)

Characteristic of Zen art is an austere impressionism, a suggestiveness; the gaudy and the elaborate are foreign to the aesthetics of Zen. A deep love of nature also influences the Zen aesthetic, where the “love of nature [is] nothing but a discovery of her beauty identical with one’s own soul. The work of art thus is considered not only as representing nature, but as being itself a work of nature.” (29) Zen aesthetic theory emphasizes a naturalness, a simplicity, a “kind of reflective restraint that deliberately leaves room for the imagination.” (30) Unfilled spaces and  silence are characteristic of the arts of Zen, for space is “something positive in itself.” (31)

The principle of simplicity is referred to as “sabi,” the application to art of the Zen virtue of “wabi,” which is “poverty” or “aloofness.” Although wabi is a state of mind satisfied with few possessions and not tied to world affairs, it is not incompatible with being involved with, or living within the world. Rather, wabi is a “chastity of heart unstained by the circumstance in which it moves, in which it finds experience.” (32)

In contrast to that of the West, asymmetry is characteristic of Zen art, as is found in the [page 31] “one-corner” style of painting: “The ‘one-corner’ style is psychologically associated with the Japanese painters’ ‘thrifty brush’ tradition of retaining the least possible number of lines or strokes which go to represent forms on silk or paper. Both are very much in accord with the spirit of Zen.” (33)

The imbalance and asymmetry of the “one-corner” style, along with the poverty and simplicity of sabi all emanate from one central perception of the truth of Zen: “ ‘the One in the Many and the Many in the One,’ or better, ‘the One remaining as one in the Many individually and collectively.’” (34)

D. T. Suzuki traces the enormous impact of Zen Buddhism on Japanese art to the fact that during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries “Zen monasteries were almost exclusively the repositories of learning and art.” (35) Because the Zen monks, themselves artists, scholars and mystics, had constant opportunities to come in contact with foreign cultures, they were influenced by the arts developed in other cultures and were encouraged by the political powers to bring foreign objects of art and industry to Japan. In addition, the aristocrats and the politically influential class of Japan were patrons of Zen institutions. Thus, “Zen worked not only directly on the religious life of the Japanese but also most strongly on their general culture.” (36)

Zen was, however, not an alien manner of thought, which dislodged indigenous Japanese beliefs, traditions and arts. But neither did the Japanese merely shape Zen to suit their purposes. Rather, “the two melted together, with the resulting amalgam often seeming to be all Zen, while actually being, in many instances, merely older Japanese beliefs and ideals in a new guise.” (37) While the Zen masters did not invent new forms of art, they “co-opted existing Japanese (and sometimes Chinese) forms and revised them to suit Zen purposes.” (38) Among the many examples of this co-opting in the forms of Japanese art, was the art of theatre.  “[V]arious types of rustic dramatic skits popular among the Japanese peasants were converted by Zen aesthetes into a solemn theater experience called the Noh, whose plays and narrative poetry are so austere, symbolic, and profound as to seem a kind of Zen Mass.” (39)

What is now regarded as “particularly Japanese” was in the process of “hatching” during the medieval period under the pervasive influence of Zen. In that period “we may trace the beginnings of haiku (poetry), noh-gaku (Noh drama),…landscape gardening, flower arrangement, and the art of tea.” (40) Zen has gone beyond the other schools of Buddhism, which [page 32] have limited their sphere of influence almost entirely to the spiritual life of the Japanese people. “Zen has entered internally into every phase of the cultural life of the people.” (41)

The Art of Noh Drama: Early Development

To look upon Noh drama as merely another Japanese art form ignores the fact that “Noh is the essence of Japanese art and the very heart of Japanese culture.” (42) Hung-ting Ku likens the study of Noh to the study of culture of Japan as a whole. In Noh one finds the “moral ideas, religious beliefs, artistic aspirations and aesthetic taste of the people.” (43)

Noh, meaning “skill, craft or the talent of the artist and his ability to perform,” (44) evolved between 1350-1450 at the hands of Kanami Kiyotsugu (1338-1384) and his son, Zeami Motokiyo (1363~1443). (45) In its earliest forms, Noh was anything but the “serious and subtle dance drama” it now is; rather, it was “little more than a display of acrobatics and circus stunts.” (46) Kanami and Zeami, however, made significant changes to the form of Noh.

Zeami, in his treatises on the art of Noh, stresses the divine roots of this art form; since performance artists were considered among society’s outcasts, claiming religious roots served as an attempt at legitimization of one’s art. According to Zeami, Noh has both Shintô  and Buddhist roots. Noh was developed in the Shintô tradition in the age of the gods when the goddess Amaterasu hid in a cave and heaven and earth became darkened. The goddess Ameno-Uzumeno-Mikoto “came forward and danced and sang, divinely inspired... As her voice was faintly heard by Amaterasu... she opened the door of the rock cave a little space. Because of this, heaven and earth became a little lighter.” (47) The divine music and dance, claims Zeami, were the beginnings [page 33] of “Sarugaku,” or Noh drama, in the age of the gods.

Noh also has a claim to an “even more sacred root” in India. (48)   Indian dance forms which evolved into Sarugaku were, according to Zeami, performed at the suggestion of Gautama Buddha, himself, during his lifetime. Rioting “heretics…hearing the sound of flute and drum, gathered to the inner room and witnessed the performance. The riot was calmed.” (49) As a result, Buddha could continue his preaching.

This third root of divine origin, claims Zeami, occurred during the reign of Emperor Kimmei (540-571), when an infant was found in a vase floating in the river. That night the infant, actually the divine being Hata no Kôkatsu, appeared to the Emperor in a dream, revealing his divine origin and mission. As the infant grew, he attained his highest accomplishments in the art of Sarugaku. Eventually his process of deification was complete “and he handed down to his descendants this art of Sarugaku.” (50)

The “ultimate root,” however, for both Zeami and his nephew, Zenchiku (also a Noh artist and theoretician), is Noh’s root in “the most sacred reality of the Buddha-nature.” Both Zeami and Zenchiku, “[w]ithout minimizing the importance of the various [other] religious roots emphasize the deeper, more philosophical notion of a priori pure essence, which is indicated in Zen terminology as shô or Buddha-nature.” (51)

Understanding the religious origins are important for an understanding of the formation of Noh. It is generally accepted that the dance forms of Noh were originally performed by Shintô priests in order to appease the gods. Among these forms from which Noh evolved is the masked dance form “gigaku,” which came from China in 612 CE. (52)

Sarugaku (meaning ‘monkey music’), which became “sarugakunoh,” traces its origins to gigaku. As a popular form of entertainment, sarugaku was composed of songs, dances, magic, acrobatics and juggling. Temple priests adopted forms of sarugaku to communicate the meanings of esoteric rites to on-lookers. If, for example, “spells designed to drive away devils had been recited, a piece might later be performed showing such evil figures being overcome by priests and armed with the teachings of the Buddha.” (53) These performances came to form part of [page 34] the annual religious ceremonies given at the temples.

The “field music” of “dengaku” also influenced the development of Noh. Dengaku originally referred to “the songs and dances given by country people to relieve the drudgery of work in the fields at planting time and, by entertaining the gods, to ensure their help in raising good crops.

The structure of the dances for court music, called “bugaku,” influenced the structure of Noh. The jo-ha-kyu of bugaku, “roughly equivalent to ‘introduction, development and climax,” was adopted by Noh, claims O’Neill prior to the time of Zeami. (54)

A more complicated plot development occurred in Noh drama under the influence of “ennen,” prayers for the prolongation of an exalted person’s life. These prayers, originally performed by temple clergy, were followed by dances which developed into plays by the fourteenth century. Ennen influenced Noh “by providing a model of how old songs, quotations from religious and secular literature, and a vocabulary including words of Chinese and Japanese origins might impart to the texts a dignity and beauty not found in older forms of drama.” (55)

A more significant element in the development of Noh, in O’Neill’s estimation, was Kanami’s introduction of the tradition of “kusemai”-“mai” meaning “dances” and “kuse” meaning “which are peculiar or unconventional.” But the peculiarity of kusemia lay not so much in the dances as in the music: the beat of the music “defies description, being strange in the extreme.” (56) Unique to the kusemia was the fact that “the song was more important than the dance, and the music of the song more important than the words... Kusemai forces the words to fit a musical framework marked out by a beat.” (57)

While the form of kusemai has become an intrinsic part of the Noh, Kanami may have decided to include it merely to “give his shows some variety.” (58) Whatever his reason, the use of kusemia made the productions of Kanami unique. Indeed, it may have been the uniqueness of the kusemia element which propelled Kanami’s reputation to such a degree that he eventually had the privilege of performing for the Shôgun Yoshimitsu. This “chance occurrence,” in 1374, was a decisive moment in the history of Noh; for as a result of this performance, Kanami and Zeami gained court patronage and the art of Noh underwent even more significant further change. Noh drama, once a popular art of the people, became the elite art of the court of the Shogun.

Zen Aesthetics and Noh

[page 35] Noh was a favorite form of entertainment of the subjects of Yoshimitsu (already a shogun at the age of seventeen). Since he was “trying to establish himself as a man of the people,” Yoshimitsu decided to attend the performance of Kanami, who was a well-known actor of his time. (59) Upon seeing the performance, although excited by Kanami, Yoshimitsu was “even more enthralled by the actor’s handsome eleven-year-old son Zeami, ...who also appeared in the play.” (60) As he grew, Zeami because more devoted to the art of Noh, “even as Yoshimitsu became devoted to Zeami, and thus began the long marriage of Zen culture and the Noh theater.” (61)

The form of the art of Noh drama dramatically changed under the influence of court patronage. Just as Kanami had added the elements of the kusemai to his performances to make them unique, he now added other elements to please his new audience in the court of Yoshimitsu. Characteristic of court life of the period was “Zen-mi, a taste for Zen.” (62) More significantly, Yoshimitsu himself was a great patron of Zen Buddhism. As a result, “it is natural that the productions of Kanami and Zeami were influenced by Zen’s teachings.” (63)

The Zen Buddhist influences are especially apparent in the treatises on Noh which Zeami wrote in order to empower his family, who continued the tradition of Noh, and to ensure the survival of the art form developed by his father. (64) Zeami wrote his treatises over a period of twenty years, first reflecting upon the experiences of his father and then of himself, as men in the theatre. The various developments and revisions of the ideas reflect Zeami’s changing experiences. In the later treatises, for example, Zeami gives metaphysical explanations, “often Buddhist in tone,” for the practical insights he had learned from his father and conceived of the [page 36] “Way of Noh” as a path toward enlightenment. (65)

Zeami describes the basic concepts of the aesthetics of Noh in his treatises. Among these concepts is that of monomane, which, as explained by Zeami, means: “to imitate the essence, not the particulars, and to represent the individual under his general aspect.” (66)  One sees here the Zen influence of simplicity and austerity, where one does away with the superfluous and shows only the essential. As well, there is the influence of “the One and the Many and the Many and the One” in the portrayal of the individual in accordance with the general aspects.

An important concept of Noh, which becomes increasingly complex throughout Zeami’s treatises, is hana, “the flower,” or “the rarity of the blooming flower.” (67)   Hana results from, or the flower blooms in, an excellent performance. The flower begins as a physiological attraction and later becomes a more metaphysical term. Hana, as flower, is the essence of the performance. While an actor may perform the same role many times, each performance of a good actor will be something new and unexpected for the audience; the performance will have the freshness of the flower, or hana. As Zeami further discusses hana, he describes it as the “crystallizing of experience, the flowering of one’s talent that leads to an understanding of a Zen-like essence of the human condition in a single gesture or a turn of the head.” (68) Once again, the Zen principle of simplicity is apparent in the reference to “a single gesture,” as is the emphasis on the immediate understanding of enlightenment.

Probably the most “metaphysical” of the concepts used by Zeami is the concept of kokoro, or “the invisible heart.” It is the source of the greatest impact on the audience and encompasses feeling and emotions and the spiritual state of the actor. Kokoro holds all aspects of the Noh together and is “rooted in the true essence of all things, or the all-encompassing, unchanging, pure Buddha-nature.” (69) Moments of “non-action” in Noh, spaces of silence when nothing seems to be happening on stage, are also rooted in the same deep reality, “the kokoro of all things, which provides the profound continuity to the apparent non-continuity of actions.” (70) There is a deep inner link--kokoro--perceptible by the audience, making the spaces and silences positive in themselves.

In his treatises, Zeami treats at great length the art of acting a character of old age. Rójaku [page 37] is the concept which appears in his treatises as the “quiet beauty of old age.” The beauty of old age is subdued and tranquil, comparable to “a flower blossoming on a withered bough.” (71) The understatement of the aesthetic of Zen avoids the obvious and the ostentatious; the beauty of old age is subtle.

Whereas his father introduced new elements into Noh drama, Zeami raised the Noh to new heights through his refinement of the art form as it was handed down to him; crucial to this refinement is the concept of yûgen, the “central idea” of Zeami’s work. (72) Yûgen, originally referring to the hidden meaning behind the sutras, came to mean “profound.” (73) However, by the time of Zeami, yûgen was commonly used to express “refined elegance.” Zeami combined the two meanings, profound and refined elegance, in his usage of yûgen. The subtle, suggestive qualities of restraint as found in the arts of Zen, are infused in the art of Noh under this “guiding principle.” (74)

Because of the patronage of Yoshimitsu, Zeami enjoyed life among the nobility. He sought to reflect the beauty of the refined elegance and gentle gracefulness of the nobility in his art. The concept of yügen found its clearest expression in the mimicry of this aspect of the nobility. Before the time of Zeami, plays of warriors, full of excitement and violence, were popular. Zeami, however, disdained these plays; they lacked exactly that “elegance and beauty” he so admired. (75) As developed and refined by Zeami, every aspect of Noh “is intended to achieve beauty. Noh is a supremely aesthetic theatre....But even beauty is not the final object. Noh reaches out towards eternity through beauty and the elimination of the temporal and accidental.” (76)

By eliminating the temporal and the accidental, Noh seeks to portray what lies beneath the surface, the essence at the depth. In addition to graceful elegance and beauty, inherent in the concept of yûgen is also its original meaning of “depth.” All aspects of Noh are simplified; construction of the text, the stage, and even props are abstracted to a mere symbol, to the essence at their depth. The action of the drama also follows the principle of yûgen. Ordinary human movement, for example, is distilled to its purest form, to its barest minimum of what lies beneath the surface, “for instance, a tap on the knee by one hand indicates excitement, and a few steps forward mark the end of a journey.” (77)

[page 38] Likewise, emotions are portrayed in a restrained manner, where they, too, are distilled to their essence: “Noh plays present deeply emotional situations portrayed physically by the actor with restraint and understatement but with an underlying intensity.” (78) Thus, while Noh is austere and understated, it is also intense; in fact only the “moments of greatest intensity” are portrayed in Noh drama. (79) These intense moments and simplified portrayals in symbolic form are guided by the concept of yûgen, for “all aim at depth and genuineness of sentiment and avoid those multiple efforts which accompany any realistic representation.” (80)

Even the number of characters is kept to an absolute minimum. While dramatically there are two characters involved, structurally, Noh dramas revolve around one main character, the shite. The main character, however, is not developed to the extent that characters of Western drama are; rather, the shite “possesses only a few individual qualities…or is the reincarnation of a powerful emotion.” (81) In fact, the creation of “character” may be labeled “meaningless” to Noh, as the shite generally belongs to another world. Because the plot revolves around one main character, with the waki, the second character, as a mere support role or observer, there is no conflict between characters, as in the Western tradition of drama.

In brief, the structure of most Noh plots begin with the entrance of musicians and the chorus, who are then followed by the waki. The waki, often portraying a monk, starts to tell the story, establishing the locale and the circumstances of the main scene about to unfold. The waki then moves to the corner of the stage, where he sits and awaits the arrival of the shite. Dressed in elaborate costume, in contrast to all that surrounds him, the shite enters and sings and dances out his story. As his tale unfolds, one learns that the shite is not so much an actual being as the personification of a soul. (82) In the second act, if there is one, the shite usually assumes his real identity. The only dialogue of the Noh takes the form of the waki responding to the shite in the role of a confessor or foil.

The shite and waki characters appear in many forms in the five categories of Noh plays. (83) These five types, also a progression, are a “creative rework[ing]” of the six realms of the rokudoh system of transmigration through which one must pass prior to reaching enlightenment. (84) The five types of plays, in descending value, are named according to the role of the main character: [page 39]

1.         God plays (Kami-mono) or second actor plays (Waki-mono)
2.         Warring or martial figure plays (Shura-mono)
3.         Wig or women plays (kazura-mono or Onna-mono)
4.         Miscellaneous or contemporary figure plays (Genzai-mono)
5.         Demon plays (Kin-no-mono) (85)

As in the rokudoh system, one’s present place on the scale has been determined by one’s past acts. Thus, for example, very often one finds the shite as a reincarnation of someone who had previously lived. The shite usually confesses to the waki the events and passions of that former existence, which explain the reasons for the present sad condition of the incarnation. Or, for example, one might find a shite as a poor old beggar woman, who has taken on this form because she, once young and beautiful, disdained her many lovers. (86) Her past acts, which she confesses to the waki, have caused her present pitiful situation.